Of course, that doesn't stop them from unleashing the hordes on the bad guys instead!Ĭommonly overlaps with Necromantic either someone attempts necromancy in order to bring back their loved one, or this was the start of their descent into evil. As it usually results in the resurrection going wrong and forcing them to re-kill said loved one.īut since that's not nearly as interesting as zombies, the idea of a necromancer unleashing waves of zombies still persists. In other cases, it involves the phrase ' Be Careful What You Wish For' when those necromancers try to bring back a loved one. Most stories involving naive and inexperienced necromancers include the Aesop of how you should respect the cycle of life and death. This means that sometimes necromancers are seen in a more sympathetic light, using their powers to commune with the dead, heal others, or use their power over souls for good ends. It was widely practiced across the world until the Renaissance when it was equated with demonology and got its bad reputation. The word necromancy comes from the words nekros (dead) and manteia (prophecy), meaning that necromancers are more likely to summon spirits for divination than armies of rotting zombies. However, necromancy didn't always have the evil connotations that it has today.

Any villain that practices necromancy is virtually guaranteed to fall hard onto the far side of the evil scale, and any hero who dares to dabble in it is likely to be seen as having fallen into evil by others. In typical (older) media they're the epitome of the Evil Sorcerer, showing none of the respect Due to the Dead, using The Dark Arts to create an army of skeletons, zombies, undead animals and undead monsters (or any kind of Undead being) to ravage the countryside or enslave souls of the damned for their own evil and twisted purposes. Necromancy, the magic of Interrogating the Dead, has been practiced since at least Ancient Greece, where it was known as Necromantia, and probably earlier. A practitioner of a specific kind of Whatevermancy, Necromancers are the masters of the art of death.

Killing necromancer darkest dungeon